A Modest Proposal
by NakeBenihime
Summary: RenRuki one-shot. Byakuya summons Rukia and Renji to see him at his mansion to make a very shocking request of them...


**A Modest Proposal**

Byakuya felt a twinge in his throat and promptly cleared it, coughing into one of his fists. He sat alone on a large pillow in one of the many sparsely decorated rooms at his family compound. The sound of footsteps outside the sliding paper doors signaled him for what he had been preparing to do for the last little while. "Please enter…" he said.

"Yes, Nii-sama," said Rukia with a serious-looking Renji flanking her, as they entered the room. A servant slid shut the sliding doors behind them from the hallway. As they strode in, their white socks blared in contrast to their black shinigami robe uniforms.

"Captain," said Renji, acknowledging his commanding officer with a quick bow while standing.

"Be seated before me, you two," said the ever-stoic man, while sitting on his folded legs near the back wall. The small, box-shaped room had nothing in it except that flat seat pillow, so Rukia and Renji were forced to sit side-by-side on their legs directly on the carpeted floor. "I have something important I would like to discuss with you both, or I should say, I have something I would like to request."

"What is it, Nii-sama?" asked Rukia, her expression, along with Renji's, turning to surprise as they faced him together.

"Perhaps I will ask, after all—I will just be out with it then," he said, resigning himself to the matter of much contemplation in his mind. "Are the two of you ready to get married to each other, yet?"

Rukia and Renji both flushed bright red faster than their minds could process the sudden uncomfortable question, each resembling different red-hued fruits and vegetables. Renji's large tattooed forehead began to drip beads of sweat, and Rukia's sweating hid beneath her robes, but nonetheless flooded her tiny frame. They couldn't resist the urge to peer at each other out from the sides of their eyes, but didn't turn their heads for not wanting to seem obvious about wanting to look at each other.

"N…N…Nii-sama!" stuttered Rukia, as her nerves caused her to shake. Renji felt like he might fall over from the rapid rate of his heart beat.

"I ask this of you because I always had the intention of paving the way for the two of you to reunite. This is the sole reason I recruited Renji as my lieutenant. This was so you both would reconnect, and thus, marry one day…"

"—No way!" blurted Rukia, but she covered her mouth with both hands once she realized what she had just said in front of her very formal older brother.

"Really?" asked Renji, raising his notorious eyebrows. "And here all this time, I thought you recruited me because you thought I was cool …" He relaxed into a guffaw, as if laughing off a major disappointment, although he simply felt the need to break the tension in the room. But, the unbreakable Captain Kuchiki sat silent, glaring at him with his large gray-blue eyes, not moving a single muscle. Renji sat up straight again, replacing his chuckle with a more acceptable throat-clearing before quieting down altogether.

"I knew there was something going on between the two of you back when I adopted Rukia, all those decades ago. I knew you two were very close. Such a thing was evident without having to be said aloud. I always believed that I had ended a close relationship of Rukia's, possible even forced her away from her lover at the time. I knew I had done something like that…"

Rukia and Renji perked up, speechless, their listening growing intense.

"Then, I saw how Rukia never had any more close relationships like the one she had with you, Renji, as the years passed living under my roof. She dearly revered a superior officer at one time, but that ended tragically, and her love for him was fated to lead nowhere, since he had already been a married man."

At this point, Rukia developed an eye twitch while staring off into space. Renji realized he was hearing facts about Rukia that he was unfamiliar with, so he slowly turned his head and began to stare at her in disbelief as she twitched away.

"…I figured, after several years of seeing this pattern develop, that as soon as Renji demonstrated his readiness to become the lieutenant of one the Gotei Thirteen squads, I would seek him out in order to give him the position within my squad, and Rukia would finally have a chance to be happy again."

"Uhh… Nii-sama…" said Rukia, as she poked her two index fingers together, staring down at the floor. "We… me and Renji… we…"

"—We were never lovers, Captain," interjected Renji. "We were very close friends, you're right about that. But, the truth is, we never actually had a relationship like that before."

"I see," said Byakuya, closing his eyes as he processed Renji's confession. "Still, I highly suggest you two think over this proposal very carefully. It is not every day I go out of my way to recruit a husband for my adopted younger sister. Mind you, I may never do it again."

"Nii-sama!" shouted Rukia, throwing her hand up after him. "Please, don't think me rude. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Nii-sama, for thinking of me and my happiness. I am so grateful to you for that. But, really, you don't need to bother with arranging any marriages for me. I'm happy to stay single just as I am now."

"—Oh! So, I'm not good enough for you, is that it?_"_ said Renji, punching his fists into the carpet. He poked his face down into hers.

"Idiot!" she shot back. "I'm not talking about you. I'm only saying that I'm happy to stay the way I am now, thank you very much. I do _not_ need a husband."

"Chuh… It sounds more like you're trying to get out of having to go through with this, something that obviously matters to your older brother," said Renji, his face screwed up with frustration. "And, what, you think you're such a great catch that you can act so untouchable? C'mon…"

"—Stupid!" she yelled. A moment later, her loud voice became intertwined with his, but, Byakuya seemed unfazed by their typical bickering. He rose to his feet and began to walk towards the back door in the room. Something dawned on him, and he halted with his back to them, while they continued to hurl weak insults at each other from the floor.

"I have another question to ask of you both," he said, as the duo ceased fighting. They looked up at his back towards them. "I trust, since you two claim to have always lacked an amorous relationship, that there was never any impropriety between the two of you at any time during your long history together, correct?"

They gasped, blushing together in synch. "No, Nii-sama!" urged Rukia, hopping to her feet and waving her arms around in protest. "No, we've never done anything like that—No, never."

"Captain," began Renji, as he rose to his own feet, "to be completely honest, the most scandalous part of Rukia's body that I've ever seen before is her butt-crack. That is all…"

"WHAT?"shouted Rukia, shooting him a deadly glare. "My butt-crack?When did you _ever_ see my butt-crack?"

"Huh?" said Renji, backing away, as if he were being threatened by an attack dog. "It was in a photograph, Rukia. I swear."

"You saw it in _a photograph?" S_he yelled at his face loud enough to blow his spiky red ponytail. "There's a photograph of my butt-crack out there floating around somewhere, and you never told me about it!"

"—Hey, don't get mad at me. I wasn't the one who took the picture. Yell at Yamada Hanatarou from Squad Four. He's the real culprit here."

"When did he—?"

"When you were at the beach with the Shinigami Women's Association. You were wearing a bikini with all the other ladies. He showed us the photo afterwar—"

Rukia grabbed Byakuya's seat pillow from off the ground and whacked Renji's midsection with as much force as her tiny body could muster. It had little effect on such a large-bodied man, but Renji had no choice but to feel the impact of her wrath.

"What's the problem?" he asked. "It's not like you have much of a butt-crack to worry about, anyway."

"That's not the point!" She slapped him with her hands repetitively on his shoulders and chest. "You still shouldn't have even _looked_ at a picture of me like that! What are you, some kind of pervert? I leave you alone for forty years, and _this_ is what you turn out to be like?"

"Geez, I'm a guy, Rukia. I'm not a robot. Cut me some slack, will ya? Guys can let their curiosity get the better of them sometimes. Besides, I didn't even know I would be looking at a picture of you when I first glanced at it."

"—That's not an excuse, Mr. Weird Eyebrows!_"_ He caught her wrist with his hand before she could land yet another blow. "Speaking of bodies, what's with yours, anyway? Why do you have all those black tattoos all over your chest and back, huh? Planning on joining up with an Amazon warrior tribe someday?"

"Ho, ho," he cooed back in her face. He caught her other wrist as she tried to smack him with that hand. "These tattoos happen to make me look cool. 'Sides—I ain't hearing any complaints from the ladies in the Sixth Division barracks—ha-ha!"

"What are you saying—that you run around shirtless everyday over there?"

"You know I like relaxing in my kimono."

"In your pajamas? In front of all the people you work with? Have some decency."

"Like I said, no one's complaining …"

"You're such a doody-head—let go of me, already!"

"I will once you stop hitting me …"

Byakuya quietly slid open the back door, as Rukia and Renji continued their ritual hemming-and-hawing at each other, like a couple engaged in an intimate dance. At this point, they had pretty much forgotten he was in the room with them. Their voices began to fade with each step he took down the long hallway.

"It is no use," he said under his breath to himself, striding further and further away from their fading voices. "Do not fight it, you two. I cannot be convinced otherwise … I know how deep your love is for one another.…"


End file.
